Noting that a historical example of local control is valuable in assessing the results of greater community involvement in school affairs, this article focuses on the development of the decentralized Pittsburgh school system, which in the early 1900's was composed of 38 sub-district boards, each possessing authority to levy taxes and to appoint…

System-wide school decentralization is now implemented both in New York City and in Detroit. It is important, therefore, to inquire into alternative explanations of the origins of the school decentralization movement with a view to constructing models of school organizational behavior and change which may have utility either to other school…

This book is divided into four chapters. The first examines the concepts and issues related to understanding social systems and how the schools can be viewed as a social system. The differences between centralization and decentralization, as well as systems-analysis and management-control approaches are also explored. In the next chapter, we are…

This chapter traces the migration from farms to cities and the later movement from cities to suburbs and discusses the impact of the resulting big city environment on the governance of big city education. The author (1) suggests how local, State, and Federal governments can improve big city education; (2) discusses ways of planning for the future…

This paper examines whether suburban communities can provide any useful conceptual tools for the examination of the prospects for community control in cities. Several propositions are advanced: First it is argued that the relevance of suburban community control to the poor in the cities is not diminished by the finding that those of high social…

Demands for urban decentralization and community control are indexes of the inaccessibility, irresponsibility, and unresponsiveness of the institutions of urban government in the 1970's. How and why these institutions have become the focus of such widespread dissatisfaction can be understood only in the total context of urban politics in America,…

Advocates of community control over local schools seek deference to parental preferences from the professional staff. Specific proposals include: (1) Staff accountability to parental representatives for student learning; (2) parental participation in the selection of school principals; (3) parental participation in school level decision-making,…

A study was conducted to examine current concepts and procedures of community college governance in the United States and the United Kingdom. Agendas and minutes of board meetings were analyzed and interviews were conducted with administrators and board members at four institutions, one rural and one urban from each country. The participating…